I did a head-to-head of the Apogee Mini-DAC and the Benchmark with a pal. Exact same system and music both times ( except see note below). We preferred the Apogee, you might not. It depends on your musical taste I think. The Benchmark has a sound others have called 'lean'. That's probably translatable into a frequency response chart but I think of it as in lean muscles--the sound was so detailed and focused it was like following the contours of a ripped bodybuilder's leg, arm, torso etc. compared with seeing the whole form. The Apogee OTOH didn't draw attention to detail but didn't seem to be missing any either. Instead the sound was about harmonics, clarity and following the flow of the whole.
It's not that I wasn't impressed by the Benchmark--I was very impressed. I wouldn't have missed hearing it but in the end I preferred to live with the Apogee. Oh, there was one surprise. That was the HF performance of the Benchmark. It was a bit hashy and poorly defined, cymbals white not metallic, that kind of thing. That may have been been because of setup -- the BM was running without a preamp, straight into the GamuT power amp, while the Apogee went through the ( GamuT ) preamp.
